Re: autoreconf uses aclocal even when not needed

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/22/2017 03:15 AM, Max Horn wrote:

so I have this project where I use autoconf and libtool, but*not*  automake. Turns out 
that autoreconf insists on using tools from automake anyway, namely by invoking 
"aclocal" which is part of automake.

T


It won't do that if you supply your own aclocal.m4, even a trivial one. 
See, for example, the file autogen.sh in the GNU Emacs master source code.




Or perhaps aclocal should be migrated from automake to autoconf? (Perhaps under 
a different name, to simplify the transition?)


Something like that might make sense, if someone had the time to think 
through all the issues.

Re: autoreconf uses aclocal even when not needed

[Nick Bowler]

Hello,

On 3/22/17, Max Horn  wrote:
[snip]
> $ autoreconf -vif --no-recursive -I cnf/m4 .
> autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
> autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
> autoreconf: running: aclocal -I cnf/m4  --output=aclocal.m4t
> Can't exec "aclocal": No such file or directory at
> /sw/share/autoconf/Autom4te/FileUtils.pm line 326.
> autoreconf: failed to run aclocal: No such file or directory
>
> I can "fix" this by installing automake, but this is deeply
> unsatisfactory.  Is there a better solution?

Not sure why this is a big problem, but if you supply aclocal.m4
yourself, autoreconf will not try to run the aclocal program to
generate it.

Cheers,
  Nick